My mother and the Pope

My mother and the Pope have a lot in common. Here’s a story about the lessons I learned from my mother.

This past weekend I happened to tune into TED talks and I saw Pope Francis talking about- the only future worth building includes everyone. And it made me think of my mother and here we are in May, Mother’s Day, Spring, New Beginnings.

And I thought about my mother’s teachings. And there’s something that my mother always said to me when we would be, we had a big pond for my mother and my mother’s house and she was, she taught me how to skip stones, you know when you skip them across the water, and I would take, as a little kid the big stone, and plop it into the water and it would make these big ripples and then my mother would take the little flat stone and she would skim it across the tip and it would make a small little ripple, and she would often talk to me about how the big rock and the larger ripples effected the shoreline, affected change, but the little pebbles also affected change. It didn’t have to be a huge impact to make a difference. So the little pebbles, that you would skim, would have smaller ripples and so those ripples would take a little bit longer to get to the shoreline and it would take more of them, somehow, maybe to effect change on the shoreline, but how everything no matter how small makes a change, makes a difference. And so when the Pope was talking about how we all need to work together, everybody, to be, to show kindness, to show loving, to be kind to each other, to be caring to work together, I had to smile because my mother who, who wasn’t a religious and organized religious woman but she was incredibly spiritual. And her name “of the earth” you know she truly was of the earth, and really connected to every little thing, all things in nature, and how all things in nature have a purpose and how it takes every single piece to make a big community to work together, to be positive and supportive of each other.

So, here on the first day of May, it happens to be a beautiful sunny day here in Connecticut, I wanted to just share that with you as we come upon Mother’s Day and we think about our families and hopefully being together whether be with your mother or, or somebody that you love, your family or even a friend or friends or maybe even a stranger, show them love, be kind, smile. Tell the people that you care about how you feel about them, hug them even if it’s from afar because life is really short, we need to work as a team to support each other not against each other. I sound like my mother now and I think we all become our mothers, we all channel our mothers at some point. I want to wish you a happy Mother’s Day and I want to send you love and happiness and caring and good wishes and hugs. And whatever new beginnings that you might be going through and maybe difficult times, keep a smile on your face because when you smile inevitably somebody else will smile back and that could make your day and you may have made their day and all of that kindness piles up on top together and piles up on top of each other and become, grows and grows and grows and has a snowball effect and it really does make us feel better. Happy May. Happy Spring. Happy Mother’s Day.

I loved hearing the interview you gave about your mom. I had no idea of her journey. You have so much to be proud of her And her Kittisms are phenomenal. Thank you for sharing lovely strands of her life